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BT line rental question

If I change broadband/phone provider, what happens to the BT line rental I have with BT at present? I see Talk talk and sky and perhaps others take over the line rental. If you let someone else handle the line rental than what happens if I want to change providers in the future, concerning the line rental?

We live out in the rural sticks and the telephone line does go down, perhaps a couple of times a year. If you are with BT, you can phone them, e-mail them, use their on line system to see if there is a fault. Anyway, they usually get round to fix the fault by the end of the next working day, and often sooner

However, if you are with another provider, you'll find you need to get on to your line service provider. BT won't talk to you, answer e-mails, or allow you to use their system to check a fault

In such a case you'll need to contact your service provider so that they can get on to BT to fix the fault. As your phone (as well as your broadband) is off, you'll either need a mobile phone to report the fault (cost?) or get a neighbour to report the fault for you or jog off to the nearest phone box (???????????????????????????)

In this locality the actual refix back on service time tends to be 2 days for BT line rental customers and about a week for others

The reason is that if you read the terms and conditions for many of these other providers they promise to "try" to fix your problem within 5 working days. Most times, that will involve a weekend

When the service provider asks about a BT line, they are usually suggesting a line that is 'serviced' by BT. Once you leave BT, then the new provider will usually take over, and any complaints have to be dealt with by them, BT will no longer deal direct.

I use Talk Talk, and have a number of service problems with the broadband and telephone systems. Its getting rather confusing as to who I am dealing with at times. Talk Talk customer and technical services plus TT on-site engineers (contractor), plus BT OpenReach and Network engineers. All of which causes further problems and delays.

When I was a previous long-term subscriber to BT, it was a 'one-stop' service. Now its a 'many-stop service'. Perhaps food for thought there?.

I'm with Talk Talk and there have been a couple of times when the phone has stopped working, but the BB has been OK.

I've emailed TT with the problem and they've responded within around 48 hrs with a series of things to try.......a long time without the phone.

It's quite possible that none of these suggestions fix the problem, which then involves another couple of days wait while they respond to the next email.

Obviously much quicker if you contact them by a mobile phone and don't mind the cost of waiting in a queue and then try the suggestions offered while on the phone.

In my case, the phone filter was damaged once during a thunderstorm and their suggestions via email identified the fault and on another the phone started working again after 12 hrs before they'd responded to my email.

You don't have to change, you can keep the BT line and change ISP. I have just changed to Sky from UKonline and the telephone line rental is still with BT. The number of calls I make it wasn't worth the hassle of changing and as '961' said it can result in a faster service call-out for line problems especially with over-head lines.

The problem is quite simply that all the work on the network from your exchange to your house is done by BT openreach, whoever you pay your line rental to. When you report a fault to any other supplier, such as Sky or Talk Talk, they will then have to report the fault on to BT for them to fix. From local experience, my guess is that all these faults are transmitted to BT, perhaps once a day in a great computer report, for their attention

If my line goes off, I can ring BT on a mobile, and report it as soon as it happens. They will check my line while I wait and establish if there is a problem. If there is, they virtually always say it will be fixed by the end of the next working day. If my neighbour over the road, with Talk Talk has a problem, he has to report it to Talk Talk and BT will not even speak to him at all. If his line goes down on a Friday, it's often Tuesday before BT even get to hear about the fault

You get a cheaper line rental from these other companies but at the end of the day it really is often less than a £ per month, sometimes as little as 50p per month. If you have an overhead line in rural UK it is not worth the hassle

But if you can get a total phone, line rental and broadband in one deal it may be worth moving away from BT line rental. I'm yet to be convinced

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